My first computer used a Zilog Z80
CPU. It was the original Sinclair/Timex Z81 which came with a giant
1,000 bytes of RAM. I think I'd like to forget it. Then on to several
Radio Shack Color Computers which were infinitely better, though the
clock speed was only one third of the Z8's speed. The Sinclair was
dragged down because the CPU had to provide all the video and sound
functions as well as normal duties.

My first "IBM Compatible", a Tandy 1000, used the 8086, if I remember
correctly. With the add-in '286 card it really flew, for the time.
Unfortunately that card blew a gasket and after keeping it for a month
Radio Shack informed me that it couldn't be repaired. From there it
was on to the '386 DX (SX was a very poor performer), '486, Pentiums,
Cyrixes and AMD's ... I've gotten as far as a dual core desktop HP
7800, but the only quad core is in my Google Nexus 7 Tablet.

I've still got my Heathkit H-8. Put it together in winter 1976/spring 1977.
With a wopping 24 kB of ram, it ran an 8080 processor. Although invulnerable to
todays viruii, it was horribly slow LOL.

I also had a Tandy 1000 and was able to write some code that could emulate
interference conditions on radios using CW. It did have some interesting
capabilities on its sound generation.

My Sinclair Z81 was acquired in kit form
in March of 1982 at the very reasonable price of $149.99. I bought it from
Gladstone Electronics in Toronto but it took 9 long weeks to arrive from
England - a feature they hadn't advertised. Of course when I found it
needed more RAM (16 K for $200), a new cassette player ($80), a new TV set
(it output to channel 31 and the one I had thought I would use ended at 13)
and a spark on foil printer ($149.99) it wasn't quite as cheap!

With its membrane keyboard I soon mashed the "New Line" (Enter) key so
often that it stuck in after 6 months. The local Radio Shack dealer sold me
the first of my 3 RS Color Computers in September of 1982. I found the 32
column display inadequate for Word Processing and so upgraded to my first
Tandy 1000 in 1984. It cost $1749 without monitor, hard drive, mouse or
second floppy drive but it was a real business tool.

Even my first Android Palm PDA had more power than that Tandy but it was
all a great adventure and I enjoyed every minute.

When we look back at the prices of early computing gear and convert
them to the equivalent in today's money it's clear just how cheap
technology has become. Looking around the gear I have here it would
have been way beyond my means 20 or so years ago

Also seems like some of us in here have had a lot of fun growing up
with the technological revolution and even though we know there will
be even greater leaps in technology to come I somehow think that those
of us who lived through the early days had an experience that kids
today will never have, and few will understand as Grandpa and Grandma
'go on' about 'the old days' !

My first computing experiences were on VT100's hard wired to DEC 11/70's
at work, and using the TI700, if I remember right, from home. I was
transferring from an electronic lab environment to a computer lab and
learning to use Unix and emacs editor. The use from home had a phone
handset coupler and paper printout. I think that was about 1982. What
fun.

Now, there's a real antique. Did this one generate clouds of smoke?

Really showing my age, in 1952 I installed a pair of these in a
facsimile link for sending weather maps between the local forecast
office and the airport operations room. Just as well we did not have
smoke detectors in the fire alarms then, else the place would have been
evacuated several times a day.

To get nearly back to the subject, Software, after a spell with machine
language, then Assembler, I moved to Pascal, then to Forth and have
never used Basic. Now in 2012 it's Lazarus (Pascal), playing with
Python but not really learning it and re-writing a local Group's Access
databases in Filemaker so as to run on a Mac system.

25 Hz power systems, gosh! Parts of Auckland (NZ) were on 200V DC up
until the 1940's but generally everyone else started on 50 Hz.

The sparking printer made a metallic smell but no smoke. (Isn't there
a better name for it?) It used rolls of 100 mm. wide aluminized paper
and was as slow as molasses. I modified a basic WP programme to print
more than one page and it worked, but it took 2 minutes to scroll to
the next page. My next printer, used with the RS Color Computer, was a
Smith-Corona daisy wheel job, sold slightly modified from their
electric typewriter. It's output was really clear and sharp, if you
could stand the sound of little hammers 12 times a second! After 3
months it quit and was fixed under warranty. Another few months and it
quit for good, literally with a puff of smoke. It cost $1,100 in 1984.

It was replaced by a $360 Star dot matrix printer, which worked fairly
well if you could stand the whine and produced print that was legible
but not beautiful. Since the printer port on the Color Computer was
serial it needed a serial to parallel converter - another $130. When I
moved to IBM compatibles and Windows 3.1 it would no longer work as
they never produced drivers for it.

I can't remember when the 60 cycle conversion took place in Toronto.
My best guess is early or mid '50's. Toronto Hydro absorbed all the
costs. They sent a crew in to move refrigerators out to the front lawn
and pulled out the sealed compressor unity etc. replacing it with the
new 60 cycle one. Electric clocks and small appliances had to be taken
into a local depot and traded for a brand new 60 cycle one. Everyone
was quite happy with the result as all frequency sensitive appliances
were made brand new again. Of course there were no personal computers
to worry about then...

I'm not longing for the old days. I prefer my colour TV and MP3 music
and on a good day I enjoy my computers and Android phone!

Remember that sparking printer, and though never had one myself we had
a machine at work that produced its output the same way - a needle
passed over the paper as it fed through and high voltage pulses blew
the aluminium top layer off to reveal the black paper beneath. Yes it
was slow but this only had to give a single trace ( measured the
surface roughness on grained aluminium plates ).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spark_printing

Oh the joys of using that thing

Yes, the heat sensitive paper was great. We used it for the weather maps at
WROC-TV in the 1960s LOL.